


Tales From Vaar Cydonia

by lobster_emoji



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mandalorian OCs - Freeform, Slice of Life, custom worldbuilding, it's literally all oc content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28357473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobster_emoji/pseuds/lobster_emoji
Summary: A collection of short one-shot stories about my Clan Cirnad Mandalorian OCs living life at their home on my original planet.
Kudos: 4





	1. Flight of the Burun'Tabalut

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a translations at the end of each chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> circa. 24 BBY

A light on the switchboard blinked an angry red, accompanied by a beeping just prominent enough to catch attention. Jarjai tears her gaze from the windows to the light. 

“We got an alert?” one of her coworkers asks from the other side of the room. Enovan's head has popped up from her datapad.

“Self-called,” Jarjai says, pulling up the details. “They’re out on the bay. Where’s the _verd_ on duty?”

Enovan winces, hiss of her teeth audible across the room. “They’re way northwest of _yaim_. Even at the patrol fighter’s top speed, it’d be better to deploy an emergency team from here.”

“One of the Jaofetins called it in. Ice cave-in, sending the coordinates to _Kom’rk T’ad,_ ” Jarjai says. “You cover the base, I’m heading out.”

“Who’s your _traat’ad?_ ”

“Mirviin’s downstairs, I’ll take him.” Jarjai bolts out of her chair and into the turbolift, _buy’ce_ in hand, headed down from the top of the Burun’Tabalut watchtower to the hangar below. 

“Mirviin!” Jarjai shrieks, running out of the lift. “We have a mission!”

“Get my jacket?” the other Mando calls from the hangar. “Which ship?”

“The second one,” Jarjai calls over her shoulder as she runs up to the row of blue-and-yellow uniform puff jackets hanging on labelled hooks. She grabs her own by rote, and searches for the hook labelled _Kuroya._

Mirviin is loading a case into the _Kom’rk_ as she runs by, and Jarjai tosses his jacket into the hold of the ship. She flings herself into the ship’s cockpit, and fires up the engines. She links her armor’s comms into the ship’s, and opens a line to the back. “Ready to go?”

“Just say where, _Alor’ad,_ ” Mirviin says. “Everything secure back here. Doors closed and ready.”

The hangar doors slide open in a flash, state of the art hydraulics making sure that rescue ships can get out quickly— (officially, of course. No one wants to let the air-conditioned temperatures out, hangar doors outside the domes exposed to the full chill of winter and the entirety of the summer’s sweltering heat, despite the energy shield’s assistance.) 

The _Kom’rk_ rockets out into the snow. It’s not coming down hard, flakes gently wafting down from gentle, fluffy clouds. It bodes well for their rescuees. Since the hangar opens facing down the mountain, they’re already headed in the right direction; Jarjai holds the ship steady, gunning the accelerator as Mirviin prepares in the back. 

Mirviin tugs his jacket on over his green-painted armor as he reads the mission details; ice cave-in, two fell in the freezing water, another soaked trying to pull them out. It’ll require the thermal shock blankets and stocked puff jackets, maybe some hot chocolate for the verde they bring back. He pulls out three blankets, securing them on the table in the modified ship’s recovery room, and sets the small built-in kettle to begin heating a pot of water. The wardrobe full of warm jackets can be opened when they’re on their way back. 

He preps the descent stretcher last, hooking it onto the winches by one of the ship’s sliding doors. 

“Coming in hot!” Jarjai calls over the comms, and Mirviin secures both his helmet and his jacket’s hood, modified so as not to be shredded on his _buy’ce_ ’s spikes. 

“Ready,” he calls, strapping himself to the ship. “Starboard door.”

The door slides open. The ship’s hovering around a hundred feet off the frozen surface of the bay, standard procedure; the time spent on landing and takeoff can make the difference in getting someone to the _baar’ure,_ and the flying ambulance is equipped with descent stretchers. 

Mirviin leaps from the ship, dragging the stretcher down with him, and watches the teens on the ice below get larger in his vision. Out skating a bit too far from home when the ice got too thin, he supposes. 

Three shuffle closer to him, and are helped up to sit on the stretcher by their friends. “Thanks,” Mirviin says to them, as he shows two of the shivering _ade_ how to grab onto the stretcher’s straps for safety. The last is already familiar, both to the safety procedure and to Mirviin’s acquaintance. He keys into the comm, telling Jarjai: “Got them.”

The stretcher’s cables, attached to the winches above, pull upward, and the three teens sitting on the stretcher fly upward alongside Mirviin safety-harnessed in. 

Once the doors close, the ship banks hard, then stabilizes itself as it levels out on its way back home. It’s been seven minutes since the call came in.

Mirviin ushers the three teens into the recovery room, and throws the blankets over their legs once they sit down. He throws open the wardrobe, hands each a roughly-fitting jacket in the Patrol’s colors, and dumps spoonfuls of powdered cocoa into three mugs, adding hot water, and passing them out to his sodden guests. 

“Not too hard a rescue,” he says. “You all skate too far away from _yaim_?” 

“It’s my fault,” the blue-skinned boy says dejectedly. Lovi Jaofetin, Mirviin vaguely recognizes him as. “Vheka here lives offworld, and didn’t know how to skate, so I figured as long as he was visiting Vaar Cydonia and our _buir’e_ were hanging out, I could teach him.”

“And Lovi’s a competitive _shabuir_ on the ice,” the still-shaking Jawa next to him says. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

“I challenged them to a race,” Lovi says. “I didn’t think. It’s still only Stage-1 winter, we were way too far out. The ice gave out from underneath the two of us.”

“I pulled them out,” the Mikkian girl says, and Mirviin knows Mirdala all too well. 

“I’m glad _you_ didn’t fall in,” Mirviin says. “Your _buir_ would have killed you.”

The comms crackle. “Am I seeing the feed right?” Jarjai asks from the cockpit. “Mirdala Gaabur, what were you thinking?”

“It’s my fault,” Lovi repeats, but his protests are ignored. 

“You should have known better, ad’ika,” Jarjai says. “I’m just glad you could have helped these two _di’kute_.”

“Sorry, _buir,”_ Mirdala says, pulling her borrowed jacket tighter around her, hood up over her head-tendrils. 

When the ship lands and Mirviin escorts Lovi and Vheka, who’d taken a full-body dip, to the _baar’ur_ on call, Jarjai comes around to talk to her comparatively drier daughter. “I’m glad you’re not hypothermic,” she says, pulling Mirdala in for a hug.

“Love you, _Buir,_ ” Mirdala mumbles into her mother’s shoulder. “Can I hang out in the tower for a bit?”

“That Jaofetin kid is crazy,” Jarjai says, shaking her head. “His twin is a much better influence on you. Come on up, keep the shock blanket with you. Jacket in the washroom.”

Upstairs, Jarjai settles back into her post, and as she looks out over the scenery shown in the windows, she sees the other kids skating back home, reaching the edge of the bay. 

Mirdala sees it too. “They made it back safe.”

“Good.” Jarjai pats the chair next to her, and as Mirdala settles down and boots up the datapad she keeps at her _buir_ ’s desk, Jarjai feels the satisfaction of another simple rescue mission well done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando’a:
> 
> Verd/verde: warrior(s)  
> Yaim: home  
> Kom’rk: a model of Mandalorian small transport ship  
> T’ad: two  
> Traat’ad: teammate, in this case the sense of mission partner  
> Buy’ce: helmet  
> Burun’Tabalut: Weather Patrol  
> Alor’ad: captain  
> Baar’ure: doctors/medics  
> Ade: children  
> Buir/buire: parent(s)  
> Shabuir: motherfucker  
> Di’kute: idiots


	2. Long Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> circa. 32 BBY

Tatooine was never the most pleasant place for Wasuur to visit, but business was business, and since Jabba the Hutt had wrested majority control of the planet from Gardulla, the work for _beroyase_ could be found in ample supply at his palace. Wasuur is far better suited to cold climates, and as he slips his helmet on and seals it, he cranks his armor’s cooling systems up as high as they’ll go.

Jabba’s palace is packed with the usual clientele, and Wasuur skulks in the back while he waits his turn to see the Hutt, helmet remaining firmly on his head. The cooling system is the only thing keeping him comfortable, and the people’s stereotypes of Mandalorians as entirely being rugged, musclebound humans can lend him a bit of extra gravitas as long as no one sees his blue face underneath, striped with his golden Pantoran tattoos. He still has all the muscles, though. 

When he’s called up to receive his job, Wasuur takes what he’s given without a word. He’s new to the bounty hunting scene on Tatooine, and though he dislikes the Hutts and all they cultivate, they certainly pay well. He’ll take another couple of Guild jobs next, but it’s time for a big payday. 

He flies off, drags back a smuggler who owes the Hutts big time, and gets paid. Simple job. After he sends the large majority of his payment back home to the clan, Wasuur decides to stay on Tatooine for a couple more days; the biggest podrace in the Outer Rim is happening, and he’s a bit curious about the Boonta Eve Classic. 

Wasuur refrains from placing any bets. He’s watched Gardulla lose more and more of her wealth across his occasional visits, and has heard the rumors. He’s glad when the race is over—some tiny 9-year-old human upended all expectations to not only finish a race for the first time, but _win._ A Toydarian, a few boxes over, throws something in frustration. It was an exciting race, worth sticking around to see.

He heads back to his ship and starts plugging in coordinates to the navi-computer, leading him back to Vaar Cydonia. The screen flickers and goes dead, and Wasuur pounds the side of the console. The navi-computer flickers back to life, and Wasuur briefly considers finding someone to fix it; here in Mos Espa, where he’d visited for the race, or back in Mos Eisley near Jabba’s palace. He shakes off the paranoia. It’ll get him home, and he’ll have it checked out by a clan mechanic. 

The navi-computer accepts the coordinates, and the ship goes to lightspeed. From past experience, Wasuur knows how long it’ll take him to get home, so he strips off his armor and settles down for a nice long nap. 

He’s shaken from sleep by the jolt of the ship leaving hyperspace. A proximity alarm goes off. It’s far too soon. Heart pounding, he bolts up to the cockpit. 

The ship’s floating in deep space at the edge of an asteroid belt. Wasuur checks the fuel reserves; there’s plenty, so running out of fuel wasn’t the problem—

The faulty navi-computer. He checks his location on it, and verifies against comms and starcharts. Esagas sector, near Hutt Space. About halfway home. 

Wasuur sighs. If he’d known the computer would give him this much trouble—

No. He knew full well, just squashed down his instincts out of his desire to get home sooner. He opens up the side of the navi-computer, and is faced with a mess of circuits and capacitors that he has no hope of understanding. 

“I’m a bounty hunter, not an engineer,” Wasuur mutters to himself, and closes it back up before he does any worse damage. He barely knows enough to fix a coolant line on his ship, much less repair the most important and sophisticated part of his hyperdrive system. Maybe it’s not even a hardware issue; can a navi-computer get a virus? He won’t know until he limps his way home. Wasuur briefly considers getting a mechanical lesson or two before he goes out again.

Anyway. He sits back upright, and starts punching in the coordinates for Vaar Cydonia again; the computer at least got him in the right _direction_ last time, maybe this time will land him close enough for sublight travel. Movement out of the corner of his eye; outside, a swarm of deep-space creatures seems to have surrounded his ship. 

He racks his brain for the spacer’s zoology book he read years ago when he first became a bounty hunter; mynocks? No, too large; Esagas sector—it has to be grallocs then. All the more reason to get away fast. 

He maneuvers out of the swarm as best he can and punches it. The hyperdrive sputters alarmingly. “ _Osik,_ ” he hisses. The ship suddenly lists to the left as another alarm blares: fuel line ruptured. A gralloc’s latched on anyway. Wasuur slams his hand into the console. ” _Nayc, nayc, nayc,_ _**shab**_!” 

Suddenly, a whirr. The hyperdrive activates, and he shoots off into the void, quite possibly leaving a swarm of scorched grallocs behind. Wasuur sighs, relaxing, but then his eye catches the screen. 

The coordinates for home timed out after the first failed jump. He’s on a straight-line trajectory headed vaguely Galactic-west-northwest, directly at the outskirts of the gravitational mess that is the deep core.

“I just get all the luck, don’t I,” he mutters sarcastically, and taps a few buttons to drop out of hyperspace.

The ship gives a horrific shudder, but keeps hurtling through the blue swirls of hyperspace. 

Dread settles into Wasuur’s bones. He’s on a straight line trajectory, unable to safely drop out of hyperspace or stop the ship at all. He quickly checks to see if he can steer at all—no luck there. The overwhelming odds say he crashes into something, space dust, a star, a planet, anything in the densely packed path that is his route to the Core. In that case, he’ll probably be instantly vaporized and die. In the astronomical chance he _doesn’t,_ he’ll eventually run out of fuel and be stranded in space. There’s nothing he can do. He dies today, he dies tomorrow, there’s no way he gets out of this ship alive.

 _Manda help me, I’ll be seeing you soon._ Tears running down his face, Wasuur drops his head into his hands. He gathers the last of his mental fortitude, walks back to his bunk, and pulls his armor back on. He’ll die in his armor, if nothing else. 

He returns to the cockpit in his armor, holding a pack of rations and holos. He’s going to stay there, and meet his fate head-on. 

He pulls up a holo, and stares sadly at it. His _buire, ori’vod, vod’ad,_ and even his little grand-niece, so young. She won’t remember him except in holos, the only other Pantoran adopted into their family. He had wanted to watch her grow up, him as her old _ori’ba’vodu_ giving her her traditional tattoos when she was old enough. 

He looks away, into the lights of hyperspace, before he bursts into tears. They’re prickling at the corners of his eyes already.

Hours later, a proximity alarm goes off.

“So this is it,” Wasuur murmurs, and braces his hands on the sides of the seat, holo of his family still lit on the dash. 

The ship lists to one side, but miraculously manages not to drop out of hyperspace. The computer readouts list out a bunch of data: from what he parses out, he just skirted by the field of anomalies in the deep core but came out of it with his trajectory altered. The ship’s path was bent around the gravity wells, and is now rocketing away at even greater speeds towards the bottom of the Western Reaches. If his luck’s held out this long, maybe… maybe he can take another nap. His last one was interrupted anyway. 

He wakes up naturally, no screaming alarms, back stiff in his pilot’s chair. _I’m getting old,_ he thinks, as he rubs out the cramp, slipping a hand under his armor’s backplate. He’s somehow still alive, in hyperspace. For force knows how much longer. He checks the fuel tank; it’s depleting rapidly, after the gralloc bit into the line, but there’s still enough in there to keep him going for a while yet. 

Somehow, eventually, the ship runs out of fuel. He’s adrift, far from home, with no idea where he is, but he’s alive. By some miracle.

And if a miracle gave him his life, it’s got to be a miracle _squared_ that he’s in a star system. Drifting near the very outside of the system, life support barely functioning on auxiliary power, but based on a quick scan, he’s in an _inhabited_ system, no less. 

On a less fortunate note, he’s deep in the Unknown Regions, where his navi-computer, even if it were functional, does him no good, but it seems like not such a bad price to pay, given the circumstances. 

After a quick assessment of resources, Wasuur determines he can probably survive adrift for a couple of days. There’s rations for weeks, but the water supply is thinner, and the power to life support will run out first. 

It’s about halfway through his time when a pair of incredibly unfamiliar-looking ships fly up to flank his. The comms, in power-saver mode, blink to indicate an incoming transmission, and he answers it. “Hello?”

Complete gibberish comes from the other end—words in a language he’s never heard the likes of before, spoken in a concerned, questioning tone. Wasuur responds. “What?” 

The others hesitate, then try what clearly sounds like a different language. “Um, can you try another?” Wasuur asks. “ _Huttese?”_ he asks in the language. 

The strangers try a third language, and this one sounds vaguely familiar. Wasuur doesn’t speak it, but he’s heard some Wild Space traders haggle back and forth in it. He scrolls desperately through the translator modules on his ship, and locates the name of the language he just heard. “Sy Bisti?” he asks, and then reads out a phrase on the screen. “ _Do you speak Sy Bisti?_ ”

They say something else, more excitedly. Wasuur looks at the translation readout. _Yes. Are you in need of assistance?_

He sends back a text reply, not yet trusting his own mouth to pronounce the unfamiliar words. _Yes. Out of fuel, hyperdrive and nav computer damaged, power going soon._

In return: _We will tow you to [Untranslatable] and can fix your ship._

 _Thank you,_ Wasuur responds, and feels the ship shake as two tractor beams lock on, flying him back to the strange new planet. He’ll patch the tank and refuel, fix the hyperdrive, figure out a way to _pay_ for all of it in the Unknown regions, learn Sy Bisti, and then start limping home. Jump-to-jump travel is the slowest kind bar sublight, but how long can it really take for him to get back to civilization?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando’a: 
> 
> Beroyase: bounty hunters  
> Osik: shit  
> Nayc: no  
> Shab: fuck  
> Buire: parents  
> Ori’vod: older sibling  
> Vod’ad: niece/nephew


	3. A Bit Peckish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> circa. 20 BBY

A small animal ran through the halls downstairs. Shosuum stopped in his tracks. The bird—at least it looked like a bird—stopped as well. 

He’d just dropped off a bagged lunch to his _vod_ Mirdala, who was spending another full day holed up in the library poring over books, and was on his way back when the probably-a-bird made a strange appearance. It was running on two legs, not appearing to make even the slightest attempt at flying, but is covered in russet brown feathers. It cocks its head to the side, and makes a small _squawk._

Shosuum’s head-tentacles flutter at the sound, and he lunges after it. 

The bird clucks in alarm, flapping its wings excitedly, but uses its legs to run away from him. Shosuum lunges, wrapping his arms around the little bird. “Gotcha!”

It clucks again at him, and attempts to peck Shosuum’s hands and arms with its beak. “Ow!” he says; he’s not old enough for his own set of armor yet, and there’s no _beskar_ protection. “C’mon. Let’s go find your _buir._ ”

The bird continues to struggle in his arms, but Shosuum holds it just tight enough not to injure, and wanders back into the doorway it had emerged from. 

His nerves keep his skin crawling as he walks back into the low-traffic Downstairs greenhouse area, where crops are grown underground in low light or under UV lamps to keep the clan fed regardless of the temperature Upstairs. 

“Uh, _Su’cuy?_ ” he calls down the hall. 

A Twi’lek woman sticks her head out of a door down the hall, looking harried. She takes in the pre-teen Nautolan boy holding a wriggling bird, and sighs in relief. “Thank the Manda. I left the coop door open earlier, and Force knows how many of my chickens escaped. I’ve been looking for that one for quite some time.”

“So it’s called a chicken?” Shosuum asks, then takes a closer look at the woman. “Uh. aren’t you _alor_ ’s sister?”

“Eepa Cirnad, at your service,” the woman says, jokingly settling into a low, sweeping bow. “Can’t bend as low as I used to, but the greenhouse paths are cut into the ground. It’s like having the crops up in planters.”

“That’s nice,” Shosuum says. “Where do the chickens go?”

“You can bring _Dal’ika_ down the hall,” Eepa says. Shosuum follows dutifully, down the wide hall. He notices the stone floor gradually become more dirt-covered as they walk along, and peers into the few open doorways into the greenhouses, where all sorts of plants grow. 

“Is Dal’ika its name?” Shosuum asks. “Me and my family have a pet strill. Its name is Pella.”

“I call all of my chickens Dal’ika,” Eepa says. “Habit. Do you know that they provide all the eggs for the clan?”

Shosuum’s eyes are wide. “Really? I had eggs for breakfast!”

“Maybe that little one laid them!” Eepa says. “If I didn’t love them so much, you could eat their meat too; they taste quite a bit like the nunas kept across the main cavern. But my little ladies are too precious to kill.”

Shosuum privately is glad of that; now that he’s seen the chicken, stared at it one set of beady eyes to another, he can’t stomach the idea. The chicken is kinda cute.

Eepa shows him to an open doorway; she strides right in, but he stops to look around. 

A fence separates the entryway from the rest of the large cavern, which sports the more advanced daylight-simulation light panels along the roof, glowing bright blue as if it were almost summer. 

Behind the fence, about two dozen chickens in a wide variety of feather colors wander about. He takes in the small structures with ramps to the door, where chickens climb in and out; he watches them walk through the grass in the planted yard, and peck about. They sip from water containers placed about and splash in a small brick-lined pool, and there’s even an elevator to the Upstairs that chickens can freely wander into.

“They can go Upstairs?” Shosuum asks. 

“There’s more enclosure up there,” Eepa says. “I prefer to let them get natural sunlight, when the season’s right. Plus, even chickens like to look at the stars. They’re in one of the Upstairs farm biodomes. The fences are even higher there.”

Shosuum walks up to the fence and gently lowers Dal’ika to the ground on the other side. She clucks once at him, and wanders off to take a sip of water. 

“It’s almost time they were fed,” Eepa says, beckoning for him to follow. 

Enraptured, Shosuum follows. “What do they eat?”

“Anything they can get their beaks on,” Eepa laughs. “But for this particular meal? Bean sprouts.”

“Same as us?” Shosuum says.

“They’re omnivores,” Eepa explains. “When we tell everyone to send their food scraps to the farms, some of it gets composted to feed the plants, but some of it gets fed to the dal’ike.”

She retrieves a bag of sprouts from one of the silo caves and returns to the chickens; upon spying the bag in her arms, the chickens go crazy, swarming towards the gate in the fence. 

Eepa opens the top of the bag, hesitates, and hands it to Shosuum. He staggers under its weight. She gestures out at the chickens. “Spread about half of the bag across the ground,” she instructs, “then we can step in using the gate. Then we spread half of what’s remaining. Then we have to check to see how many chickens are Upstairs, then lure them down to the food so they don’t starve. The rest of the _dal’ike_ will eat it all otherwise.”

Shosuum holds tight to the bottom of the bag and swings it in a wide arc, scattering the sprouts across the planted grass. All the birds by the fence immediately apply themselves to the food, and they can step in without a problem. 

Upstairs is just as beautiful as it always is, but Shosuum is _in_ the farming dome. The rolling fields of land unplanted around them could be imagined with crops ready to be harvested, given warmer weather; neat rows of dirt cross the land, with a few small buildings at the center, with the Upstairs portion of the coop a way away from the cluster. 

There’s three chickens wandering about up here. Shosuum reaches into the bag, holds out a handful of sprouts to the birds, and is mobbed back into the elevator to Eepa’s delight. 

When she manages to make it down, the last three chickens have gotten their fill as well, and Shosuum is sitting on the grass in a pile of birds, one of which has wriggled into his lap. 

“They like you,” Eepa says. 

Shosuum’s completely and totally enamored. “Can I come back and see them again?”

“Whenever you want,” Eepa says. “If you want, you can help me and Fabrin out in the greenhouses, too.”

Shosuum nods eagerly. “Elek, gedet’ye!”

Eepa laughs. “Run along and let your _buir_ know, and you can come back and learn anytime you want.”

Shosuum whoops with glee, startling the chicken out of his lap, and now that he’s free to stand up, he runs off. “Vor’e!”

“No problem,” Eepa whispers to herself as she watches the young boy go. She’s glad to be a mentor to another young one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando’a: 
> 
> Vod: sibling  
> Beskar: mandalorian iron used in armor  
> Buir: parent  
> Su’cuy: hi  
> Dal’ika: little lady  
> Elek: yes  
> Gedet’ye: please  
> Vor’e: thanks


End file.
